Here to Bask in the She-Ra

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FINN!!🎉

very possibly not intentional, it might just be how it was animated, but there's a blip while adora's saying "i can't just leave her there" where her eyes almost seem to flash that blue she-ra shine as she opens them to look up at glimmer

it might be nothing, but i like to think our gurl's already boutta burst into her true she-ra just at the thought of how bad she wants her cat back

adora: (crouches down)

When putting together the merch spreadsheet it struck me how incredibly non-canon a lot of the additional material is, even when officially licensed, but that some people don't know about it, so I thought I'd make a quick master list of external material some people might cite for information and how much stock you should put in that.

To be clear, if you want to use the non-canon material to inspire you or as part of your fanfiction, you absolutely can, you just can't assert that it's canon, that your reading is evidence-based, or that other readings are wrong. This covers books, promotional videos, and crew information.

Tracy West chapter book series and Rebel Princess Guide: Non-canon

Tracy West never saw the show or even spoke to someone on the crew. Dreamworks sent her some development material, such as the show bible, and she wrote her books based on that. It is impossible to know if any new detail she gives is internal canon knowledge, something that was once in consideration but has since been changed and thus is no longer canon, or is a complete invention she made to fill in a gap (that might not actually exist but she wasn't given the answer in that material) or serve the specific story she was telling.

For instance, we know Octavia's canon age is late 20s at the earliest and likely her 30s because of S1EP11, but Tracy didn't, so she said she was in the same class as Catra and Adora. This is a standard process for these kinds of books and she was doing her job, a good example of this from an author interview is from the Descendants book series. The movie never acknowledges that many of the villain characters died in their original movie. The assigned chapter book author noticed this and felt like it was a plot hole, so she - of her own invention and with no input from any movie writer - inserted the detail that the villains had all been resurrected from the dead by the crown to be imprisoned on the island in the book. Which I think is hilarious btw but if I was a movie writer and that conflicted with my vision it would drive me nuts to see people mentioning it as a "fun fact" online.

Anything "new" in the Tracy West novels could have a similar source. It is also verified fact that ND... let's go with "obscured intent" in the initial show materials by referring to Catra as a scrappy little sister character and let people fill in there was a "sister" relationship between Adora and Catra even though that was never his intent because he was immediately shut down when he stuck a toe in the water by calling Spinnerella and Netossa, two minor characters, wives. This is why the line about them being like sisters is included in the early copies of the books. Tracy West wrote the books keeping in mind the canon details she was aware of, but they were limited and the direction she takes her stories cannot be used to infer anything about canon.

Listen, I love the letter Adora wrote Catra inside the Rebel Princess Guide and I like to talk about it as its own thing, but that letter is just Tracy's interpretation of where Adora was at that point in the story, it's not actually part of the canon.

The Legend of the Fire Princess graphic novel: Non-canon

No one from crew was involved with the graphic novel. It was likely written in a similar way to the Tracy West books (although to my knowledge no one has contacted these authors to confirm like with Tracy). The story was written by Gigi D.G., drawn by Paulina Ganucheau, colored by Eva de la Cruz, and lettered by B.C. Peterschmidt. ND Stevenson was NOT involved in this graphic novel at all. He is always credited prominently, but when you read the credit, it is "based on stories by ND Stevenson" and they're using his name because he's the name people are more likely to see and go "oh, I want to read that".

Like the Tracy West books, this graphic novel is based on the canon knowledge available to the writers at the time but the "new details" cannot be used to extrapolate anything about the show. This is easily proven with one fact: the novel depicts a map of Etheria that is from the original show because it was easily accessible, and we KNOW it's not accurate to the reboot. You can do this with logic based on where some of the areas of the reboot are shown to connect, but here's the easiest total disqualification: the OG map (shown below, above the graphic novel's version) has the Valley of the Lost (left) depicted on the opposite side of the planet from the Crimson Waste (right), and it's INSIDE the Crimson Waste in the reboot, as shown in S4EP2, which aired 4 months before the graphic novel's release. Of course the graphic novel was drawn prior to its release, but that's proof no one from the show was involved with the novel, because they would have realized they made a massive error with the geography long before the episodes aired.

The reboot is a radial land mass with the Whispering Woods in the middle, it's not this butterfly design centered on the Fright Zone. This graphic novel has a ton of information about the magic system but we have absolutely no reason to think that's based on canon when the authors didn't have even the map the writers used. Fun to play with, go for it, but it's not evidence for canon.

Rebel Recruitment shorts: Non-canon, but closer

These were written by show writers and voiced by the official VAs, and thus are the closest to canon we've come thus far, but it's pretty clear these are not intended to be taken as serious canon since they show the cast creating social media videos, and if anything equivalent to it that could distribute these videos existed in canon, we would have had some indication of it by the end of the show. It's promotional content and the writer for a short said it was a fun project to do, but it's not meant to be taken seriously.

Mattel-produced birthday short (doll promotion): Non-canon

I don't have to get into this right. It's a YouTube commercial waving dolls around to get little kids to imagine what play pretend they could have if they bought the dolls (not knowing at the time that the play pretend would be imagining they had the dolls at all after Target tried to cancel the release. It's fine I'm fine. I don't want to talk about it. When I get my hands on you, Target......). Um, I mean, the crew was not involved in it, it contradicts other official material, etc.

Crew statements outside of the show: Varies

Look, if you hate Word of God (information not communicated within the text but stated by creators outside of it) and don't want to use it, that's fine and valid, but sometimes it does provide important context and ignoring it is willful misinterpretation of the story. And sometimes ND makes a joke and the fandom never lets it go lol, so lets get into some examples and then some specifics.

Because She-ra is a collaborative project created by an entire team and censored by an entire corporation, there is "canon material" that is not canon or actively contradicts other canon. Take for example Spinnerella and Netossa being pitched as wives and ND being told he doesn't have to change that fact but he can never state it, which is how we end up with them just.... always being with each other in S1-S3, and them having a date night in S4 as ND railed on executives to tell his story, and Netossa explicitly calling Spinnerella that in S5 after ND got approval. If he hadn't gotten that approval, this would still be canon, because it only wouldn't be present due to censorship.

An example of that is Perfuma. Perfuma was intended by her character designer to be a trans woman, but due to the above situation they knew it wouldn't be allowed, so there wasn't much they could do. To me, this is the intent, but it's a small external statement, and it gets into another complicating factor: her character designer said this. Not ND, or Jen, or Shane, or Kiki, so she wasn't written with that perspective behind anything except her design.

An example of how the different crew member's viewpoints diverge in canon can be seen in The Portal. Micah's final line is "Wait, Angella, I'm not-" and then he gets eaten by the portal's void. Josie Campbell wrote this episode. ND Stevenson wrote the previous one (Remember). Josie and ND were both in the audio booth with Micah's voice actor (Daniel Dae Kim). Josie didn't like the takes they were getting and so she asked Daniel to read the full line and they'd just cut him off, at which point ND asked Josie "What full line"? and Josie replied "oh, it's 'Wait, Angella, I'm not dead'". ND didn't know that was how Josie had originally written the line. He has talked about this in interviews before, and it's a good example of how canon is written by multiple perspectives and if you ask every single person on the crew a question you are not going to get one answer, because ND would have said the rest of the line was something different if you asked him before that.

Another funnier example is Entrapta's hair. Some of the crew think it's magic and some think it's tech. It's very obviously magic but I digress, all this adds up to statements made external to the show being far less dependable than anything that passed final review, but there are some things that 1) would be included if they could be (due to censorship, time constraints, etc) or that 2) were never really meant to be included but were being kept in mind while writing the characters.

One example of this is the timeline. The writers room knew they were planning for the show to span roughly 2-3 years, but which end of the scale each writer falls on will vary and this isn't explicitly stated in canon. This is information the writers were working from that has been communicated to us and it's fine not to use it, but it's clearly the canon intent even if it's only subtly communicated within the show by the character designs filling out as they age (except Frosta, sorry, you have to be the relatable younger kid character even if you should be 14 now LOL).

The final complicating factor is ND likes to joke a lot and people are very bad at telling what the jokes are, so I made a roundup of some various statements the crew has made that I've seen be referenced as fact before and how canon they are, and then it got WAY too long, so it's under the cut below if you're interested.

From HeroTheHardWay’s fanfic As Long As We Stay Together (If We Just Stay Together). It’s such a unique catradora fic: they’re estranged college roommates, best friends, and NCAA hockey players who are now astrophysicists stationed together in Antarctica. 

Idk guys I think my art regressed...

omg!!!

also lol'ing at her being a pomeranian??? they do tend to be really sweet, friendly, playful dogs (at least, the ones I've met) but they're also tiny dogs who are convinced they're much bigger!

thank goodness I did this one in advance so I actually had something ready to post for this week's Summer SPOPtacular (@spopfandomevents) prompt:

🍉 Fruity 🍉

aka I just had to draw Glimmer with this cool watermelon hair trend I saw online!